


There are No Songs

by Arlyshawk



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Herbalism, Magic-Users, Major Illness, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 02:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4769732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arlyshawk/pseuds/Arlyshawk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Inquisitor Trevelyan suffers from the terminal illness that cripples her family - and now her - she calls upon a dear friend to help ease the pain and give her insight into what might come. (Post Inquisition)</p>
            </blockquote>





	There are No Songs

_She is weak._

Eowyn feels it in her bones, in her muscles each morning when she wakes from a dreamless night. The Anchor is quiet and sedate, but that does not mean that her world has gone entirely quiet. There are twinges that frighten her, premonitions that it might burst at the seams and flare alive with screams. She feels as though she is drowning, each breath is a task; if she breaths in too much, she coughs until her ribcage aches all the way around to her spine. She keeps up the façade that nothing is wrong, even to Alistair who is her bedmate for nearly a year. 

The only person she tells her problem to is Alysanne. The elven woman is a healer by craft, a seer, someone that looks into the water and sees the future and the past that both so muddled she cannot tell if they’re true or false. On a winter evening, she asks it of Alysanne to come up to her rooms. 

The Keeper slinks into the room as quiet as a shadow, dressed in a cloak of bobcat furs and lavender robes. She is a beautiful creature; chocolate hair drawn back into a braid to reveal the pale grey markings of the God of Crafts on her face and the tips of the wings of a raven. Her rosy lips pull into a soft smile in greeting, stooping to kneel before her and taking her shaking hands in her own. 

Alysanne's face scrunches up with concern, "Da'len, you look pale." She has the voice of a feather, soft against the skin but warm. Eowyn feels her fingers on her cheek and then they brush her hair behind her ear. She looks at the floor, ashamed. "You have no need to feel shame for such things. You are ill." 

"I'm hiding it from the man I love - how could I not feel at least a bit sorry?" Eowyn tries to keep her voice low, a cough threatens her by crawling up the back of her throat. Her belly clenches tight, rolling in her body like a snake under sand. 

The elven woman frowns, rises, and crosses the room to a cabinet where Eowyn stores her herbs for her elixirs. There is a slight curse in Dalish and then she pops back up with vial of muddy liquid. 

"There is no shame in such things, they are real feelings. No one wishes to tell their beloved that they are withering away, that you could die," Alysanne says carefully, as if prodding the question itself. "Though.. I must ask - what _will_ you tell Alistair if it culminates? Surely you cannot go the rest of what little life he has and however long you will live, lying." 

She knows this.. She doesn't wish to burden Alistair further, all ready he faces the voices of the true Calling in his mind. Eowyn often hears him muttering Tevene in his sleep, in a tone that is not quite his own, it is gruff and guttural, a rasp. She has to often shake him so furiously that he ends up on the floor, confused as to how and why he was there. 

"When… I don't know," Eowyn murmurs and rings her hands. "What would you say?" 

Alysanne wicks a tiny blue flame between her fingers and warms the bottle in her hands. "It is not for me to say, often I said what had to be said rather than spin a web of lies I could not escape from. Over and over I did this, perhaps that is why I have spent nearly half my life alone." 

There is a bitter taste on her tongue, like spoilt milk. She pulls at the sleeves of her robe, "People hate the truth." 

"No, Da'len, people dislike the truth because it is like a dragon's fire. It burns bright at first, a torrent of heat and pain before it," Alysanne lets the fire flicker out of existence with a rubbing of her fingers. "Vanishes, and the smoke clears and they are left with the ashes of what is _their_ truth." 

The vial she takes is warm in her hands, the remnant of a flame that is forever trapped in the glass, an imprint. Uncorking the bottle, she sips the murky liquid and bites down the urge to spit it back up. It tastes of dirt and smells of rotting corpses, but she abides because she knows it will save her in the long run. The Keeper sits on her bed, shrugging her furs closer to her and heaves a sigh. 

"How fares the Anchor?" Alysanne enquires and motions to the bandage she keeps over the scar that formed on her hand. In fairness, it has yet to trouble her since the Breach was sealed forever. Dipping her head, Eowyn sees a true smile crease the elf's face, "Good. It pleases me to know what work I poured into that mark finally paid off." 

She swallows a gulp of the vial as her mouth numbs to the taste, "And the time you spent with Solas studying it. I remember coming down from my studies with Dorian to see you two asleep." 

The elf chuckles, "True, but even then we spent what felt like hours in the Fade, searching dreams and murals and libraries that were so thick with knowledge that my head begins to ache with the thought even now." 

"Will you return to the Free Marches in a while? I know that Cassandra recruited you because you were a healer but…" 

Alysanne waves a hand dismissively, "I do not think I will. There is nothing there for me anymore. Without a doubt they have replaced me, for I have never been an asset to them after all." 

She cocks her head toward her friend and the elven woman rises gracefully to touch her forehead, saying, "I was taken from my original clan, Clan Sabrae in Ferelden, since I was born with a gift for magic. The Keeper of Clan Lavellan was dying of a terminal illness that I - at the time - could not heal. I was but a girl still, just on the verge of blooming and I was trapped, caged, to become Keeper before the age of twenty." 

Eowyn's eyes grow wide at the thought of a young Alysanne, frightened, with no one but spirits to speak to with the hopes they would ease her fears. It makes her tremble. She is young still when compared to her parents' age and yet, she is perishing. 

"When did you truly become Keeper of the clan?" 

Alysanne takes Eowyn's hair and begins to braid it back. Her hands are steady, gentle as they pick out tangles and smooth down the unruly waves that form from simply sleeping. She speaks as she works, "When I was twenty one. I had received my vallaslin at the age of sixteen and my Keeper robes then. Yet I still had much to learn." 

"And how did you learn it all?" 

"I read, every night and day that I could while watching the little ones or charting stars or learning to decipher my dreams. I relied upon my old Keeper in clan Sabrae to supply what I could read, whether it was written fresh or taken from old boxes and half eaten by moths." 

"That's.. Commendable." 

"No one will sing for me, Da'len, that I am certain of, however commendable it might be. They sing of the Inquisitor who sealed the Breach, who fought the Magister of yore. No one will sing for a Dalish elf, much less one who casts and sees through the water." 

Her heart sinks, because the truth tastes of ash in her mouth. Indeed no one will sing of Alysanne, or of Dorian, or Bull - they will sing of _her_. The thought makes her ill but there is nothing that can be done. Not even the feeling of the elf's fingers in her hair soothes the ire that heats her blood so. There are days such as this, that she dreams that she had never stumbled into the Anchor. Perhaps it's a sad, forgotten dream but she wishes that she held that mindset of the girl that slept in the stables with the foals, who dreamt of knights in shining armor with their horses that were as white as fresh snow. But no one would have sung of that girl… 


End file.
